MANILA, Philippines — From flying letters to a 4,500 word-discourse on wand woods, early access to JK Rowling's move into the digital arena, Pottermore, reveals a richlyimagined, elaborately realised behind-the-scenes peek into the world of Harry Potter.

Pottermore does not open to wider use until October, but has already been inundated by Harry Potter fans. There have been more than 22 million views of the webpage, peaking at some 50,000 requests per second on Augus t 3 , as readers rushed to become one of the million users chosen to receive early access and a chance to shape the website's development.

The site is free to use – Rowling has said that she wanted to "give back to the Harry Potter readership", who number in their hundreds of millions worldwide – but it will be the only sales outlet for ebook versions of the seven Potter titles.

Following Harry

On entering the site, users begin to travel through the world of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, following the footsteps of Harry and learning new facts about his world as they open an account at the goblin bank Gringotts, travel up and down Diagon Alley shopping for equipment for school and choosing a wand.

Unlocking new content as they progress through the storyline, they can click on and collect items for their "trunk", build and evolve their profiles, adding their own drawings, collecting books and chocolate frog cards, learning spells and brewing potions.

Rowling has written reams of new material – 18,000 words at the last count, but still growing – for Pottermore, as well as mining her archives to share notes she made when writing the novels.

Nuggets unearthed on an early trawl through the site include the news that Rowling unconsciously based the Dursleys' gloomy home on Privet Drive on a childhood home of her own in Winterbourne, near Bristol.

"I first became conscious of this when I entered the number four Privet Drive that had been built at Leavesden Studios, and found myself in an exact replica of my old house, down to the position of the cupboard under the stairs and the precise location of each room," the author writes.

"As I had never described my old home to the set designer, director or producer, this was yet another of the unsettling experiences that filming the Potter books has brought me."

She also gives humorous background to the long-running animosity between Harry's parents and the Dursleys – "Vernon tried to patronise James, asking what car he drove. James described his racing broom" – and explains why wizards don't need the metric system .

"Witches and wizards are not averse to laborious calculations, which they can, af-ter all, do magically, so they do not find it inconvenient to weigh in ounces, pounds and stones; measure in inches, feet and miles; or pay for goods in Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons," she writes.

High-Profile Experiment

It is said that by retaining the digital rights to her books, and selling the ebooks exclusively through this site, JK Rowling is bypassing not only her publishers but also retailers, so it's a strategy that would only work with the biggest of brands.

This kind of re-wiring of publishing relationships – agents acting as publishers, publishers acting as agents, authors acting as publishers – is becoming more common, is the most high-profile experiment yet in digital disintermediation.